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Professional Business Plan Template

Professional & Clean template with exactly everything you need to create a successful business plan. All the sections, tables and even the space allocation was created having in mind realistic and real life business plans.

Sections

Executive Summary

Company Summary

Products & Services

Market Analysis Summary

Strategy & Implementation Summary

Web Plan Summary

Management Summary

Financial Plan

Example Tables

Start Up Requirements

Market Analysis

Sales Forecast

Milestones

Personnel Plan

Start Up Funding

Use of Funds

General Assumptions

Break Even Analysis

Pro Forma Profit & Loss

Pro Forma Cash Flow

Pro Forma Balance Sheet

And more….

Changelog

v1 (23/10/15): Original Release

v2 (18/03/15): Added an entire new version, with more charts and additional layouts in 5 different fresh color schemes!

Specifications

Sections, tables and space allocation are based on real business plans

Plenty of white-space to print it in your home printer

Master Pages

Quickly make changes to the layout of each section, by editing the appropriate Master Pages. You don’t like where the page numbering is? Or the repeated page elements? Simply change the master page & the changes will affect all pages of that section.

Paragraph & Character Styles

The included character & paragraph styles help you define the formatting attributes that will be applied to the various text elements of the business plan. If for example you want to change the color or size or font of the titles, simply adjust the appropriate paragraph style and all other titles that share this paragraph style will get updated automatically document wide.

Global Swatches

Change the entire color scheme but simply changing the 2 main colors to the ones you like without having any object selected!

Table of Contents

The table of contents can be generated automatically, and then get easily formatted with the included paragraph or character styles. To automatically update the table of contents if you made any changes to the section or subsection titles follow these steps:

Change the section or subsection title .ie 2.2 Start-up Summary (or Company History)

Select the “Contents” text frame

From the Layout menu choose “Update Layout Contents”

Anything with the paragraph style of “Will Appear on Table of Contents” will automatically be added to Table of Contents

Editable vector charts

All included charts are editable vectors. You can adapt/customize them to your needs or replace them with your own.

Solar Forest

The very best designs often solve more than one problem. The same can be said for Neville Mars’ solar forest which keeps cars and people shaded from the sun, yet uses solar tiles to convert light into usable energy. The stored energy can also be used to charge the electric cars below; genius!

Plastic Balloon Power

For thoroughly space-age solar design, meet the plastic balloons which aim to magnify sunlight onto solar photovoltaic cells to improve electricity output. Like a string of party bunting, the plan is to hang the 6ft balloons onto metal wires to capture maximum sunlight. They are cheap to create, relatively easy to manufacture and could be coming to a sunny climate near you. Find out more information at cnet.

Solar tree charger

Not three words you would expect to hear in the same sentence, but this solar tree charger does actually exist. Gone are the days when solar solutions were unsightly and bulbous; now they are perfectly integrated with everyday life and interior decorations! Perfect for small electronics, the 54 ‘leaves’ on the solar tree will charge your mp3 players, mobiles and digital camera batteries with ease. Bend and flex the branches as you see fit!

Solar boat

Ride the waves and catch the sun with the TURNOR PlanetSolar boat which is the largest solar powered water vehicle in the world. The New Zealand-based designers trump the WWF boat used to raise awareness, educate the masses and save the world.

Solar fan

Photovoltaic or solar PV cells are to thank for this genius solar powered fan created by Yorick Stuyts. These cells are then connected to two small fan blades, multiple wires and a savvy motor to create the ultimate heat-beating fan. The fan is flexible so easy to fold and preserve. Plus, it cools your office, business or home for free!

Wind power

It is widely known that the EU is only just beginning to harness the power and realise the potential of wind power. However, they have high hopes for this environmentally-friendly power source technology, and the Upwind Project predicted 20-MW turbines are “likely” by 2020. To put this in perspective, current production lines create 3 to 5-MW wind turbines and the leading manufacturers are launching 6 to 10-MW turbines as we speak.

You’ll agree it’s a long way to go yet but in GE, Siemens and Vesta we trust.

Article provided by mediaworks online marketing

Brand building is an important strategy for any business, no matter how big or small it is. Yet, small business owners often lack the acumen or knowledge in how to brand their business successfully, and what strategies are open to them to achieve this. Here are some tips to get great branding on the road.

Know who you are

A strong brand lets others know what it does. Make sure you, and your staff, fully understand your own brand – who you are, what your goals and values are, what you want to achieve, etc. If you don’t fully understand yourself, then it will be hard to communicate this well to your customers.

Be unique

With lots of competitors in the marketplace, your branding needs to scream out what makes you different from the rest. Let others know why you are unique and what it is that you do differently from your competitors.

Consistency of messages

Successful branding involves reinforcing strong messages, so that your customers will retain information about who you are and what you do. Make sure you are clear on what message you want to give out, and stick to the same message on all mediums of communication. Consistency is a key component to branding success.

Name and logo

An instantly recognisable brand name and logo is a sign of good branding. Whatever name or logo design you choose make sure it is recognisable, inspires trust and makes a connection to the types of goods or services you offer. Consider hiring the services of a design agency to create name or logo concepts as you start out, and always include them on every piece of communication you send.

Get your name out there

Organisations both large and small understand the importance of building networks with customers and new customers, as well as generating trust for what they offer. By building an online and offline community, you are in the driving seat to get customers on your side and love your brand. Make the most of social networking sites and start blogging.

Online communications

Your business cards and letterheads look great, your customer service team know how to reinforce your brand with customers, and your products are something to be proud of. But, make sure that the internet is not letting all of your hard work down. It is easy to neglect this side of a business, but in fact it is a crucial element of branding. Make sure your website is up to date, and looks as slick as your offline communications. Use the same level of professionalism replying to email comments as you would for hand-written communications. Don’t let your guard down, either, on social networking sites, where it can be easy to adopt a more casual or informal approach.

Have a great product or service

Having a successful branding strategy is one thing, but you need to combine that with a great product or service. Don’t let your product or service slip, just because your branding is on top form. It’s not a sustainable strategy, and your customers will soon lose trust in you.

Deliver

It’s easy enough to spout great marketing speak about who you are and what you offer, but make sure that whatever you say and how you say it, you can deliver and not let your customers down. Create honest branding that builds up trust.

Be original

There are many great brand names out there, and there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from them and learning from their achievements. But, never ever nick ideas off them. Don’t copy the big boys, as you will soon be seen-through. Try to always think of original ideas, or at least add a twist to tried and trusted branding messages and strategies.

Build relationships

Get to know who your customers are, and what they like about you. Valuable customers who like your offering can become great brand ambassadors, spreading the word to others about what you’ve got to offer. Spend time nurturing these important relationships and get to know who your brand ambassadors are.

The importance of branding in the modern corporate world is undisputed. Whether you are a multi-national corporation making millions or a small business with limited funds, it’s crucial to understand that you need one in order to survive, and you need a strong one in order to succeed!

It all begins with brand identity

Brand identity is what fuels the recognition of the brand and amplifies the differences with their competition. It takes separated and unconnected initially elements, and through a concept, they are unified by designers into whole visual systems. Proper design in a brand identity is essential and determines how people see and feel about the brand.

You need to carefully consider your company’s logo design, website and print collaterals like your business cards, stationary, magazine advertisements and promotional material, so that they all speak with a strong and unified visual voice. All elements need to communicate distinct and clear messages.

Additionally you need to make sure that this message is the one you want to be known for! So just because your daughter can draw or you had the “bright” idea to offer your logo design in a contest for 55$ doesn’t mean is the proper way to go! In fact in most cases is a recipe to disaster.

Then comes the brand strategy

Effective brand strategy provides a central unifying idea around which all behavior, actions and communications are aligned. It also needs to be consistent and easy to understand.

To put that in test, have everyone in the company explain this strategy in as few sentences as possible. If everyone’s perception is aligned and consistent then you are at a good starting point. If not your strategy is too complex and will most likely fail.

Last but not least comes branding

Branding is the process to build awareness and customer loyalty on your brand through your brand strategy and your various marketing campaigns. Consistency is again the key for a successful branding campaign. Every newsletter, social media status, blog article and brochure must support your branding. And it goes without saying that your branding campaign needs to be both online and offline.

You can use events to build your customer’s loyalty offline. These could be charity events, festivals, or just a stall in a bazaar to promote your products. Also consider providing your customers with high-quality giveaway items that promote your brand in a positive light. Some examples are branded T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads etc. But you can find more ideas and a variety of cool branded promotional products at QLPspecialty advertising products.

As for online you can use a variety of social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn to establish your online presence and of course the blog in your website. But mind that for this promotion not to be overwhelming most of social media experts suggest the rule of 80/20. Meaning 20% of your content should be about your company and the rest 80% content of value and use to your prospective customers.

Giving your business a friendly and approachable face, and helping your customers to solve their daily problems is extremely important to your long term branding, so always be on the lookout for the best opportunities to do so!

Posters are usually seen carrying promotional content that are strategically posted over the walls of the public areas to market different products and services. These remain the best tool to boost up your branding and visitors to your stores. The fact is a poster campaign is one of the oldest and best ways to boost up your brand awareness and profits. It is considered as the one of the most inexpensive marketing techniques, which gives message to your target customer base in a most effective ways. If you are planning to choose any marketing campaign for your business, you need to follow some of its important steps. Few of the top steps of a perfect poster marketing campaign as discussed as under. Let’s check them out:

Set your objectives

As said, if you are not able to plan, you simply plan to fail. The basic step, which you need for a perfect poster marketing campaign is to define your goals in a more clear and vivid fashion. You need to be very much specific while defining your objectives. For instance are you keen to reach out to hundred new customers, boost up your website traffic by 20% or simply grow your sales by 15%?

Once you set your basic goal, it’s time to measure and track your success. Defining your objectives or setting up goals will help you in knowing the way the poster campaign has to be carried out. It will also help you in the various aspects of poster like its design, printing option and distribution. Hence once you set up a goal; it becomes very much easy for you to design, print or distribute the posters that will help you to achieve your specific business objectives.

CC Photo by Pawel Janczarek

Your poster design should be attractive enough to get the attention of your prospects. It must be able to promote your brand and thus help to relate your customers to your business. The copy of your posters should be relevant and interesting. It should be able to promote your special limited offers in order to find instant action. It should carry a proper call to action, which is nothing but the next step, which your prospects should be able to take.

You are then supposed to print the posters over a premium quality paper at a competent cost for a perfect marketing campaign for your business. This step would involve a good team having designers, copywriters and online printing company, which will give a shape to your poster campaigns. Though this campaign would require some investments, your ROI would be far better and greater.

Distributing it with wisdom

A poster having some interesting video game may not strike near any daycare center, but certainly a collection of new toys for the kids would definitely have the response. Hence this is an important step of a perfect poster marketing campaign wherein you need to identify the best place to promote your products or services. Always put your posters at a place, which is regarded as high traffic zones where your target audience often dwells. By being in your target audience’s natural environment, you would end up noticing yourself.

Final word

Poster campaigns remain the oldest and the most effective means to increase your brand awareness and profits. In order to get the maximum out of it, you are supposed to follow few important steps. The above three steps make any poster campaign a perfect one increasing your bottom line.

Article by Margaret

Margaret is a writer/blogger. She loves writing, travelling and reading books. She contributes in Logix9. Check here for more on Logix9

Advertisements are everywhere. They surround you in every aspect of your life; from your home, to your car, to work, and back again. We’ve become so used to having advertisements as a part of our daily lives that we have become numb to them — nothing seems new, nothing seems different. And if you have a new company and are trying to push your new product out there, this may seem extremely intimidating.

Where do you start? Well, for a beginning, you want something distinct from the others; you want it to be exciting, eye-catching, and visually appealing. Within this article you’ll find some tips and tricks to get your logo, or your brand, to have that perfect allure.

Now, picking the right logo is very important. Your logo is going to be sticking with you for the rest of your journey through this career path. Use this to your advantage! By designing the best logo for your company and your product, you’re choosing the “face” of the company; use this as a beneficial asset. You’ll be putting this on your business cards, any type of product that you’re pushing for, fliers, websites, emails, attire, you name it! This logo will be the symbol that people think of when talking about your company, so make it count.

Think about it

Before getting out the sketch pad yourself, or hiring an outside source to design this logo for you, think about what it is that you are searching for. Ask questions about your company to get down to the nitty gritty of it: who is your target audience? What is your company/product intending on selling/doing? Do you have a tag line or motto that you’d like to include? Are there particular fonts/colors/symbols that you absolutely need or don’t need for it to make sense? Asking these sorts of questions can help you narrow down exactly what it is you’re looking for, and make it easier to get to the next step.

Types of Logos

You’ve answered your questions, and you think you have an idea of where you want to take off. Before you put your final decision down on paper, think about all of the different types of logos there are, and which may be the overall best fit for your company.

One type of logo is just the text based logo—this one mainly is just the name of the company, with a font design that the company decided to go with. Think of Mountain Dew, Hershey’s, or Verizon. These companies stuck to having the name of their businesses as their logo. Does this sound like a good fit for your company? If you’re going through this route, have a fun—but simple—typeface. The bolder and easier it is to read, the better off you’ll be.

Another type of logo for your company could easily be image based. Some iconic imaged based logos from companies are Apple, Pepsi, or Nike. These companies strictly chose to have just an image be the face of their company—and people remember their logos, and exactly what companies they stand for. Do you have a symbol that could match up with your company, that’s unique and simple? This could be a good choice for you.

A final logo choice for you could be text base with an image. Microsoft, Target, and Twitter are good examples of this choice. They have their company name, along with a straightforward and personal image attached. This could be good for your company in its beginning stages; this way your audience can see clearly what your logo is, and what your company is, without any confusion. Later down the road, if you so choose, you can just use the stand alone image as your logo.

You’ve Narrowed Your Choices

Great job! You’ve gone through one of the toughest parts of this design process. Now, you have to make your final decision.

Have the couple of logos you’ve chosen, and create a checklist. Back to the beginning—think about it—take yourself in the perspective of your intended audience. Is it appealing? Would it catch your attention? Is it simple? Is it unique? Would you want this as the “face” of your company?

Your logo is one of the most important aspects of your company and your product. Make sure that it’s something that you want following with you throughout the progress of your company. When you’ve answered yes to all of these questions, and feel confident in your decision, get designing, and good luck!

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (July 16, 1796 – February 22, 1875) was a French landscape painter and printmaker in etching. Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism.

Movements: Naturalism, Classicism

Camille Corot was born in Paris in 1796, in a house at 125 Rue du Bac, now demolished. His family were bourgeois people—his father was a wigmaker and his mother a milliner—and unlike the experience of some of his artistic colleagues, throughout his life he never felt the want of money, as his parents made good investments and ran their businesses well.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Self-Portrait

After his parents married, they bought the millinery shop where his mother had worked and his father gave up his career as a wigmaker to run the business side of the shop. The store was a famous destination for fashionable Parisians and earned the family an excellent income. Corot was the second of three children born to the family, who lived above their shop during those years.
Corot received a scholarship to study at the Lycée Pierre-Corneille in Rouen, but left after having scholastic difficulties and entered a boarding school. He “was not a brilliant student, and throughout his entire school career he did not get a single nomination for a prize, not even for the drawing classes.”

Unlike many masters who demonstrated early talent and inclinations toward art, before 1815 Corot showed no such interest. During those years he lived with the Sennegon family, whose patriarch was a friend of Corot’s father and who spent much time with young Corot on nature walks. It was in this region that Corot made his first paintings after nature. At nineteen, Corot was a “big child, shy and awkward. He blushed when spoken to. Before the beautiful ladies who frequented his mother’s salon, he was embarrassed and fled like a wild thing… Emotionally, he was an affectionate and well-behaved son, who adored his mother and trembled when his father spoke.” When Corot’s parents moved into a new residence in 1817, the 21-year-old Corot moved into the dormer-windowed room on the third floor, which became his first studio as well.

With his father’s help he apprenticed to a draper, but he hated commercial life and despised what he called “business tricks”, yet he faithfully remained in the trade until he was 26, when his father consented to his adopting the profession of art. Later Corot stated, “I told my father that business and I were simply incompatible, and that I was getting a divorce.” The business experience proved beneficial, however, by helping him develop an aesthetic sense through his exposure to the colors and textures of the fabrics. Perhaps out of boredom, he turned to oil painting around 1821 and began immediately with landscapes.

Starting in 1822 after the death of his sister, Corot began receiving a yearly allowance of 1500 francs which adequately financed his new career, studio, materials, and travel for the rest of his life. He immediately rented a studio on quai Voltaire.
During the period when Corot acquired the means to devote himself to art, landscape painting was on the upswing and generally divided into two camps: one―historical landscape by Neoclassicists in Southern Europe representing idealized views of real and fancied sites peopled with ancient, mythological, and biblical figures; and two―realistic landscape, more common in Northern Europe, which was largely faithful to actual topography, architecture, and flora, and which often showed figures of peasants. In both approaches, landscape artists would typically begin with outdoor sketching and preliminary painting, with finishing work done indoors.

Highly influential upon French landscape artists in the early 19th century was the work of Englishmen John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, who reinforced the trend in favor of Realism and away from Neoclassicism.

For a short period between 1821–1822, Corot studied with Achille-Etna Michallon, a landscape painter of Corot’s age who was a protégé of the painter David and who was already a well-respected teacher. Michallon had a great influence on Corot’s career. Corot’s drawing lessons included tracing lithographs, copying three-dimensional forms, and making landscape sketches and paintings outdoors, especially in the forests of Fontainebleau, the seaports along Normandy, and the villages west of Paris such as Ville-d’Avray (where his parents had a country house).

Michallon also exposed him to the principles of the French Neoclassic tradition, as espoused in the famous treatise of theorist Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, and exemplified in the works of French Neoclassicists Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, whose major aim was the representation of ideal Beauty in nature, linked with events in ancient times.

Though this school was on the decline, it still held sway in the Salon, the foremost art exhibition in France attended by thousands at each event. Corot later stated, “I made my first landscape from nature…under the eye of this painter, whose only advice was to render with the greatest scrupulousness everything I saw before me. The lesson worked; since then I have always treasured precision.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Poetry

After Michallon’s early death in 1822, Corot studied with Michallon’s teacher, Jean-Victor Bertin, among the best known Neoclassic landscape painters in France, who had Corot draw copies of lithographs of botanical subjects to learn precise organic forms. Though holding Neoclassicists in the highest regard, Corot did not limit his training to their tradition of allegory set in imagined nature. His notebooks reveal precise renderings of tree trunks, rocks, and plants which show the influence of Northern realism. Throughout his career, Corot demonstrated an inclination to apply both traditions in his work, sometimes combining the two.

With his parents’ support, Corot followed the well-established pattern of French painters who went to Italy to study the masters of the Italian Renaissance and to draw the crumbling monuments of Roman antiquity. A condition by his parents before leaving was that he paint a self-portrait for them, his first. Corot’s stay in Italy from 1825 to 1828 was a highly formative and productive one, during which he completed over 200 drawings and 150 paintings.

He worked and traveled with several young French painters also studying abroad who painted together and socialized at night in the cafes, critiquing each other and gossiping. Corot learned little from the Renaissance masters (though later he cited Leonardo da Vinci as his favorite painter) and spent most of his time around Rome and in the Italian countryside.

The Farnese Gardens with its splendid views of the ancient ruins was a frequent destination, and he painted it at three different times of the day. The training was particularly valuable in gaining an understanding of the challenges of both the mid-range and panoramic perspective, and in effectively placing man-made structures in a natural setting. He also learned how to give buildings and rocks the effect of volume and solidity with proper light and shadow, while using a smooth and thin technique. Furthermore, placing suitable figures in a secular setting was a necessity of good landscape painting, to add human context and scale, and it was even more important in allegorical landscapes. To that end Corot worked on figure studies in native costume as well as nude.

During winter, he spent time in a studio but returned to work outside as quickly as weather permitted. The intense light of Italy posed considerable challenges, “This sun gives off a light that makes me despair. It makes me feel the utter powerlessness of my palette.” He learned to master the light and to paint the stones and sky in subtle and dramatic variation.

It was not only Italian architecture and light which captured Corot’s attention. The late-blooming Corot was entranced with Italian females as well, “They still have the most beautiful women in the world that I have met….their eyes, their shoulders, their hands are spectacular. In that, they surpass our women, but on the other hand, they are not their equals in grace and kindness…Myself, as a painter I prefer the Italian woman, but I lean toward the French woman when it comes to emotion.”

In spite of his strong attraction to women, he writes of his commitment to painting, “I have only one goal in life that I want to pursue faithfully: to make landscapes. This firm resolution keeps me from a serious attachment. That is to say, in marriage…but my independent nature and my great need for serious study make me take the matter lightly.”

During the six-year period following his first Italian visit and his second, Corot focused on preparing large landscapes for presentation at the Salon. Several of his salon paintings were adaptations of his Italian oil sketches reworked in the studio by adding imagined, formal elements consistent with Neoclassical principles. An example of this was his first Salon entry, View at Narni (1827), where he took his quick, natural study of a ruin of a Roman aqueduct in dusty bright sun and transformed it into a falsely idyllic pastoral setting with giant shade trees and green lawns, a conversion meant to appeal to the Neoclassical jurors.

Many critics have valued highly his plein-air Italian paintings for their “germ of Impressionism“, their faithfulness to natural light, and their avoidance of academic values, even though they were intended as studies. Several decades later, Impressionism revolutionized art by a taking a similar approach—quick, spontaneous painting done in the out-of-doors; however, where the Impressionists used rapidly applied, un-mixed colors to capture light and mood, Corot usually mixed and blended his colors to get his dreamy effects.

Corot was the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting. His work simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism. Of him Claude Monet exclaimed “There is only one master here—Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing.” His contributions to figure painting are hardly less important;Degas preferred his figures to his landscapes, and the classical figures of Picasso pay overt homage to Corot’s influence.

When out of the studio, Corot traveled throughout France, mirroring his Italian methods, and concentrated on rustic landscapes. He returned to the Normandy coast and to Rouen, the city he lived in as a youth. Corot also did some portraits of friends and relatives, and received his first commissions. His sensitive portrait of his niece, Laure Sennegon, dressed in powder blue, was one of his most successful and was later donated to the Louvre. He typically painted two copies of each family portrait, one for the subject and one for the family, and often made copies of his landscapes as well. Corot exhibited one portrait and several landscapes at the Salon in 1831 and 1833. His reception by the critics at the Salon was cold and Corot decided to return to Italy, having failed to satisfy them with his Neoclassical themes.

During his two return trips to Italy, he visited Northern Italy, Venice, and again the Roman countryside. In 1835, Corot created a sensation at the Salon with his biblical painting Agar dans le desert (Hagar in the Wilderness), which depicted Hagar, Sarah’s handmaiden, and the child Ishmael, dying of thirst in the desert until saved by an angel. The background was likely derived from an Italian study.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Peasants under the Trees at Dawn

This time, Corot’s unanticipated bold, fresh statement of the Neoclassical ideal succeeded with the critics by demonstrating “the harmony between the setting and the passion or suffering that the painter chooses to depict in it.”
He followed that up with other biblical and mythological subjects, but those paintings did not succeed as well, as the Salon critics found him wanting in comparisons with Poussin.In 1837, he painted his earliest surviving nude, The Nymph of the Seine. Later, he advised his students “The study of the nude, you see, is the best lesson that a landscape painter can have. If someone knows how, without any tricks, to get down a figure, he is able to make a landscape; otherwise he can never do it.”

In the 1860s, Corot was still mixing peasant figures with mythological ones, mixing Neoclassicism with Realism, causing one critic to lament, “If M. Corot would kill, once and for all, the nymphs of his woods and replace them with peasants, I should like him beyond measure.” In reality, in later life his human figures did increase and the nymphs did decrease, but even the human figures were often set in idyllic reveries.

In later life, Corot’s studio was filled with students, models, friends, collectors, and dealers who came and went under the tolerant eye of the master, causing him to quip, “Why is it that there are ten of you around me, and not one of you thinks to relight my pipe.”

Dealers snapped up his works and his prices were often above 4,000 francs per painting.With his success secured, Corot gave generously of his money and time. He became an elder of the artists’ community and would use his influence to gain commissions for other artists. In 1871 he gave £2000 for the poor of Paris, under siege by the Prussians. During the actual Paris Commune, he was at Arras with Alfred Robaut. In 1872 he bought a house in Auvers as a gift for Honoré Daumier, who by then was blind, without resources, and homeless. In 1875 he donated 10.000 francs to the widow of Millet in support of her children. His charity was near proverbial. He also financially supported the upkeep of a day center for children on rue Vandrezanne in Paris. In later life, he remained a humble and modest man, apolitical and happy with his luck in life, and held close the belief that, “men should not puff themselves up with pride, whether they are emperors adding this or that province to their empires or painter who gain a reputation.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot – Morning at Beauvais

Despite great success and appreciation among artists, collectors, and the more generous critics, his many friends considered, nevertheless, that he was officially neglected, and in 1874, a short time before his death, they presented him with a gold medal.He died in Paris of a stomach disorder aged 78 and was buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Hope you enjoyed the article as much as i did compiling the info and the images! See you next time!

Articles’ Images are in the public domain because their copyright has expired or are displayed here under the “ fair use” copyright law, and are available through Wikipedia & Wikimedia.

“It’s competitive out there,” come the words. Often from those you least expect. Close friends. Colleagues. Family.

Run a design studio? With your spouse? Who are you kidding?

But with care and tending, anything is possible.

“My father lived his life as if it were a poem,” wrote the son of Rabindranath Tagore, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913.

But you don’t have to write a work as brilliant as Gitanjali in order to live the creative life. You can do anything, if you know how to create value for others. It isn’t easy to discern this at the start of our lives, of course.

Life’s like a creative process. Nowhere as much as the start do we most need room and time to play and discover.

Where are we going, what are we looking for, how will we know when we get there—these are the big questions we can only explore our way into, with our hearts leading the way.

Eight years after I joined my husband, Akira Morita, at a shiny office space in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle, our studio has morphed in bunches of ways. Like any business, you try some things, they flop. You try some other things, and people start to notice. So you migrate to what works and slough what doesn’t.

The hard part is starting, especially with all those negative voices around. A man claiming to be a ex-NBA player I met walking in my neighborhood the other day confirmed the artist’s conundrum: “People don’t want to see you make it. That’s been the case for centuries.”

After you get past them, though, you can hit a stride. Once you find that groove, you get better faster. Business investor Warren Buffett advises people not to veer outside of the bounds of the stuff they’re best at. Instead, we need to concentrate our efforts doing what we’re good at and what comes naturally to us. Do that, and that only. He calls this your “Circle of Competence.”

Sometimes, what makes you effective is your ability to define your edge, and say no to things outside it.

Knowing when to pull away or persevere, that’s important. You want to surround yourself with people who value you. [Check out Eliot Rausch’s video, “What I have to Offer” (5 min)]

Once you’ve identified what you can contribute and the people who care about that, specifically, you’re ready for the next step. Work. Time to refine what you can offer the set of people who will care. Master it. Only then can you make great art.

Discovering who we each are, truly, at heart, and then expressing our true selves–that is the important work of creatives of our time.

Did you know every seven to ten years our body’s cells replace themselves? That means it’s never too late to start again, to realize our greatest potential. Our entire selves are physically refashioned. Every decade, we are entirely new compositions.

Featured image: Design your life copyrighted by Dipika Kohli

Article by Dipika Kohli

Dipika Kohli created Design Kompany with her partner in life and business, Akira Morita.

Although Internet advertising has exploded, many businesses find that good old-fashioned mediums like printing still play a very important role in their advertising plans. While your customers will expect to get printed items such as business cards or brochures from you, you can do something unexpected by having these and other items printed on unusual materials to make yourself stand out more. Here are a few ideas for five unusual mediums you can print on to promote your business.

Plastic Business Cards

It’s a Catch-22, really. You know that you need to carry business cards to hand out to your clients and to compete in today’s business world. However, your competitors realize this, too. So how do you make your card stand out in your potential client’s wallet–by plastic printing, that’s how.

Plastic business cards give you the option of the sturdiness of plastic so your card won’t get beat up once it goes into your client’s wallet and with options like transparent card printing, you can add an element to your design that your competitors’ cardboard business cards won’t have.

Wood

Wood as a medium for printing has been around for thousands of years. Many of the surviving pieces of art from centuries past were painted on wood. You can give your promo pieces that same sort of timeless appeal. If you’re not sure how to do it, think menus for a restaurant or name cards at a catering event printed on thin wood for an extra classy and memorable touch.

Canvas

In the digital age, pictures are ubiquitous. If you’re printing marketing materials like calendars or inspirational posters to send out as promo items to your clients, think about having these items printed on canvas. If you add a wooden dowel to the top of your items printed on canvas, they will become pieces of wall art reminiscent of the tapestries found decorating the walls of ancient buildings. A promo calendar designed on this medium will wind up hung up on your client’s wall where he can see it and your business name all year.

Magnets

What is a kitchen without refrigerator magnets on the fridge? Without them, most people would have no place to hang notes to their families or their kids’ artwork. Use this to your advantage by having your advertising materials printed on magnets. Your potential customers will see your name every time they open the fridge.

Kid Tattoos

If your company regularly hosts community events, and you want to create a free giveaway that’s sure to draw families to your booth, think about having something printed on temporary tattoos. Make these items something that the kids will love and the parents will remember by having a cute graphic printed on the tattoo and then your business’ logo printed on the paper backing of the temporary tattoo. At your next community events, the kids will remember the tattoo and their parents will remember you.

From cave painting to the Facebook wall, man always relied on technology to make business and communication easier. But has it? Let’s find out in the following humoristic infographic about how our modern business tools behave badly!

Hope you found this infographic useful and informative! If you want to know more about designing infographics, check out our past articles: 9 tips for designing awesome infographics & Choosing the right infographic for your business !

Business cards are used by individuals to advertise their work, but other methods can be utilised by companies to promote their business. Creative designs are best used to get people’s attention, and this article will outline designs which especially caught our eye. Designs which are intriguing, interesting, colourful or humorous will all most likely demand the attention of the person viewing it. The designs contained within this article embody a diverse range of design styles.

Bluebird’s Appealing Design

Image provided by Author

The business card to the right uses a stark baby blue colour, which is extremely pleasant on the eye and creates an immediate attraction. The writing is contained within the silhouette of a bird, and has various other patterns below which bring dimension to the card. It uses a very sleek and comfortable design which immediately draws you closer, whilst maintaining a style which isn’t over complicated. Here simple patterns and colours are used to achieve the purpose of the business card, with very recognisable images of birds which are suitable both visually and in the context of the company name. This card is an example of how a business card without gimmicks can be effectively designed, using simple yet appealing colours and design.

Image provided by Author

Bosch’s Dinosaur Leg

The advert to your left is quite a humorous over exaggerated statement made by Bosch, who advertises freezers. The advert intends to promote the reliability and length of time their fridges are guaranteed for, by suggesting they last for so long you could pull a dinosaur leg out of there and it still wouldn’t have gone off. This is an ode to the guarantee that Bosch freezers will run for long periods of time, setting up a level of expectation for a long freezer life. This is a creative design since the dinosaur leg doesn’t even feel out of place, despite the ridiculousness of even considering a dinosaur leg to exist in that form in this day and age. The design shows other condiments and equipment to accompany the leg, in an attempt to show that it’s not out of place with modern items. The user will likely spend at least some time trying to work out what is being suggested by the advert, and if the freezers work that well I might have to buy one myself!

Image provided by Author

Pravina’s Circular Design

These circular cards have been creatively designed, with a shape unaccustomed to business cards. This helps them to stand out, alongside the use of black, a bold shade, and red which is a primary colour. These colour cards will stand out amongst others (especially white), particularly when they are also circular! The elevated writing is another unique element which draws attention to the company name. The ridged writing gives a memorable feel when moving across it with your finger, amidst taking in the shock of viewing such unique cards. This design is interesting because it shows the effective simplicity of design; where often business cards can be overcomplicated with elaborate design. These are guaranteed to take the viewer’s eyes and be held onto, and also when two different cards are held together it creates an incredible contrast of colour. For unique business cards and unique sizes of club flyers, check out NextDayFlyers – they have a great selection.

It’s easy to assume that the digital age has killed off the need for business cards. It’s an easy assumption but it’s not a true one. In these high-tech, high speed days when meetings happen in cyberspace and you don’t have to go into the office to get your work done anymore – it’s increasingly difficult for traditional ways of marketing to survive. Yet, the humble business card has and continues to do so. There are several important reasons for this.

The first is that no matter how technologically obsessed we become, there is still nothing as effective as face-to-face contact, says FourthSource.com journalist Paul Lewis. Direct marketing will always, always trump digital promotion because people love to communicate. There are far more creative options involved with designing and creating a business card and it remains the perfect way to quickly showcase and identify a business. The advantages to using business cards are many and those that take heed of them are bound to come off better than those who don’t. Here’s why you should keep putting your business faith in that little square of card tucked in your wallet.

Direct Marketing Is King

Direct marketing will never be less effective than digital promotion. We may spend most of our time on iPhones and iPads these days, but we still love to chat – in person, with another physically present human being. Nothing will change that. According to Forbes journalist Carol Kinsey Goman, it takes just seven seconds to form an impression of somebody. If you can charm a potential client in person within seven seconds – you’ve got that client in your pocket. They’ll be much more sure of your value if they’ve their impression in person. Remember to keep things as informal as possible when offering an individual a business card. You don’t want to be pressuring them, you just want to be handing them an unexpected opportunity.

Business Cards Are Timeless

Extremely well designed business cards are timeless. They will not go ‘out of style’ or look out of date like computer technology so frequently does. There are, of course, many advantages to using digital software but one of the biggest downsides is that it ages so quickly. Software that was top of the range last year can look utterly down market this year, simply because it’s old. Graphic design changes with time too, but not nearly as fast and not nearly as dramatically. A good business card design will stand the test of time.
The Price Is Right

Experts at the E-Design Group, point out that business cards a cheap way to promote your company. Considering all of their benefits, they’re incredibly cost effective. They’re very small, very light and easy to carry around. The cost of a great graphic design is bound to be the biggest expense – the printing and the paper are next to nothing these days.

So Many Options

There’s just an endless list of options you can take when designing and creating a business card. Nobody said that yours had to be made out of paper – many companies now craft their cards out of oak, Perspex, plastic and aluminium. They emboss their cards, they gild them with gold leaf, they even make their cards into tiny leaflets or pop up items. The only limit when it comes to designing an unforgettable business card is your imagination. As per associates Print My Pixel, if you’re concerned about the relationship between technology and clients – why not put a QR code on your business card? It’s an amazingly easy way to incorporate both direct and digital marketing.

With hundreds of different types of inks available to each of anyone on the internet, making your own ink has become the practice confined to a very specific breed of pen nerds; the nostalgic purists, the picky perfectionists, and the cheap (ahem, “thrifty”). Whatever your reason, making ink has a long and rich history and gives us a variety of options to choose from, and being creative people we’re not above inventing our own recipes.

Tea Ink

The easiest functional ink that you can make is tea ink. Just boil about a cup of water and put 3-5 tea bags in to steep for about a half hour. Then dissolve some gum Arabic or carrageenan in the hot tea to thicken it slightly and let it cool. Bottle it up and there you have some non-toxic, edible ink. Keep in mind that any ink made from tea or berries is going to be acidic so if you’re writing anything that you want your great-great-great grandchildren to read you might want to use something else. In most cases it isn’t a concern since most writing paper that’s available is going to degrade on it’s own just as quickly as it would when catalyzed by acidic ink.

Powder Pigments

Once you feel a bit more adventurous you can move on to powder pigments. Classic and highly effective is lampblack, charcoal, or crushed minerals or seashells. If you’re interested in trying more plant oriented things you can try grinding up dried tree bark, herbs, and flowers. The trick to this is to dry the colored bit that you want (usually flower petals) on a paper towel or bit of cloth until it’s looking nice and crispy and to then crush them into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle. To get the pigment out of the cells and floating free in your ink you’ll then want to add some alcohol until you’ve got a thick paste. After that you can add your favorite thinners and thickeners to build your ink consistency.

Thinning/Thickening Agents

Because non-water based inks lack surface tension and sink into the page much more quickly with increased risk of bleeding I prefer to stick with water. If you go with that philosophy that means that besides water, which will usually leave your ink very runny and might let your ink smudge even after it’s dried, you’ll need to add a thickener, preferably a sticky one. The gums mentioned in the paragraph above make effective thickeners, but since not everyone has that sitting in their kitchen cabinet I tend to go with simple old corn starch. Food starch is a natural glue and will do the job reasonably well. That being said, I still know several people who swear by linseed oil instead of water, which will give you a nice consistency without the need for thickeners. For my part I’m going to be sticking with water based inks because I don’t like bleedy inks.

Article by Alice Jenkins

Alice Jenkins is a writer, graphic designer and marketer. When Alice isn’t trying to figure out whole stole her favorite red pen, she writes about web design, small business branding and marketing trends. Alice writes for PensXpress, a business that specializes in custom imprinted pens.